Filippo Sorcinelli, photo by Yuri Kolesnikov
With his melancholy El Greco features, courtier’s beard and linear, diagrammatic tattoos, UNUM founder and creative director Filippo Sorcinelli seems to have walked from the court of Lorenzo de Medici straight into a minimalist art gallery, carrying fragments of the past into the present with him. His latest perfume, Io Non Ho Mani Che Mi Accarezzino Il Volto (There Are No Hands To Caress My Face), draws its inspiration from photographer Mario Giacomelli’s remarkable 1961 series of the same name showing young Episcopal seminarians in unconventional situations: glissading through the snow in their black woolen cloaks, pillow fighting, dancing in a circle. Io Non Ho Mani Che Mi Accarezzino Il Volto, too, feels unconventional yet, from time to time, familiar, like a catch of music you cannot quite remember the tune of. It is simultaneously sepia and black-and-white, a marrying of notes plucked from different points in time.
Image from Mario Giacomelli’s “Io Non Ho Mani Che Mi Accarezzino Il Volto” photo series
In its early moments, Io Non Ho Mani Che Mi Accarezzino Il Volto shapeshifts: An idiosyncratic accord of myrrh, peppery geranium, clary sage, and a cinnamon I first mistook for clove gives an immediate illusion of smokiness. This is underscored by the quick emergence of ecclesiastical incense and pipe tobacco, rich and cherryish, like an illicit puff of pipe smoke in the back of a church. UNUM won’t divulge the name of the nose behind their perfumes, but no one, with the exception of Mark Buxton, can work such magic with incense.
Image from Mario Giacomelli’s “Io Non Ho Mani Che Mi Accarezzino Il Volto” photo series
Despite the swirl of seemingly disparate aromas, there is stillness in their progression. It is worth noting that this perfume is as much about the photographer as it is about his art: his bag of tobacco, the metal of his camera lens. As I raise my wrist to my nose again close my eyes, I find myself seated in a man’s study, a recently smoked pipe resting on a creaking table. A moment later, inhaling the perfume again, I am struck by its modern facets, the arid amber hit of ambroxan, the metallic, halogen air of a brightly lit gallery of photographs.
Image from Mario Giacomelli’s “Io Non Ho Mani Che Mi Accarezzino Il Volto” photo series
The second stage brings forward the woody notes and intensifies the tobacco, which alters from moist and smoky-fruity to the leathery and pencil shavings aspects of the dried leaf. Cedar acts as a floorboard to the tobacco and smokiness, subdued, having the mellow, worn aroma of the arms of an old desk chair. But again, the music changes, and I get a smell of bottled ink, turpenic and mineral mingling with the incense, woods and spicy notes.
Image from Mario Giacomelli’s “Io Non Ho Mani Che Mi Accarezzino Il Volto” photo series
The dry-down brings Io Non Ho Mani Che Mi Accarezzino Il Volto contrasting qualities together, its edges softening though not blurring. While most perfumes present incense with recognizable churchlike qualities, Io Non Ho Mani Che Mi Accarezzino Il Volto offers two parallel incenses: the literal clouds of the censers and an illusory, almost alien ashy-resinous invented by the strange opening notes combining with tobacco. The effect is like a doppelganger or mirrors facing each other: one track familiar, comfortable, lovely; the other oblique, radical, strange. The combination of the two as they marry in the dry-down is as quietly arresting and surreally beautiful as the young priests of Giacomelli’s photographs.
Notes: Petit grain, bergamot, galbanum, myrrh, cedarwood, geranium, clary sage, cinnamon leaves, styrax, ylang-ylang, incense, benzoin, tonka beans, tobacco absolute, amber (ambroxan), sandalwood.
Disclaimer: Sample provided by UNUM, at Esxence 2017–Many Thanks. My opinions are my own.
— Lauryn Beer, Editor
Io Non Ho Mani Che Mi Accarezzino Il Volto photo UNUM
Thanks to the generosity of UNUM, we have 100 ml bottle (parfum extrait) of Io Non Ho Mani Che Mi Accarezzino Il Volto for 1 registered reader in the U.S., Europe or Canada.To be eligible please leave a comment with what appeals to you about Io Non Ho Mani Che Mi Accarezzino Il Volto based on Lauryn’s review, where you live, if you have a favorite Unum perfume. Draw closes 4/17/2017.
Editor's Note: Io Non Ho Mani Che Mi Accarezzino Il Voto can be purchased as a sample or full bottle at Twisted Lily and Luckyscent
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